Power issues are probably the last thing that NSA data center officials need to deal with these days. At the agency’s Utah data center, equipment evaluated at $1.4Bn was severely affected when power surge problems were encountered.

NSA is carrying out its surveillance operations through data centers located in Utah, and several other States. There were multiple power surges, while each one of them succeeded in affecting the organization’s sensitive machinery. The surges burnt out computers that were worth $100,000 based on a rough estimate.

The Utah data center is spread over one million Sq. Ft area in size. Each month, NSA’s power cost for this data center easily topples over 1 million dollars. Sources at Wall Street Journal reportedly said that the NSA Utah data center was “supposed to start using data storage” and primary operations back in Oct. 2012. A number of investigations into the previously encountered power surges have hindered the agency’s “day-to-day activities already”.

The cause of these issues is still under investigation. Experts believe that the exact cause has not been identified, while on-field technicians think that the problem no longer persists anymore. The amount of data that is stored into the affected equipment was gathered during surveillance operations carried out at Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo.

The NSA has also been involved in phone call spying scandals recently.

Nikki Malik holds a Masters degree in Computer Science and blogs about technology products in her spare time. She is a mother of three, full time mompreneur and maintains her career as a small business owner.